Jeremy Franco

Name: Jeremy Franco

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Grade: 12

School: Bayview Secondary School

Hobbies and Interests: Gambling (especially poker), baseball, business, watching boxing and MMA

Appearance: Jeremy Franco is a small, slight boy who, despite his persistent and valiant attempts to correct the problem, looks just a little rat-like. He frequently changes the style of his dirty blond hair in an attempt to find one that suits him well, but he's yet to have luck in these endeavors (he's currently trying out a style that's cut short, gelled, and slightly spiked). His facial features are small and close together, and it can sometimes to be hard to tell whether he's always squinting or whether that's just how his hazel-green eyes look (the answer is both). Jeremy stands at a relatively short 5'6" and weighs 135 lbs. He's in relatively good shape, mostly due to his workouts for the baseball team, though no amount of conditioning seems to add much appreciable muscle mass to his slender frame.

Jeremy's wardrobe tends to be a bit unusual for a high school student. It's not uncommon to see him sitting in class wearing a black suit or navy sports coat with dress pants (which he insists to anyone who'll listen that he bought with money that he made), though he seems to have bouts of self-consciousness when even he realizes that this ensemble makes him look like a tool. On these occasions he spends a few days or weeks wearing unremarkable, cheap t-shirts and jeans before reverting to his suits and jackets. Jeremy likes to wear cheap sunglasses, occasionally indoors.

Biography: Jeremy Franco knew for sure, from the moment he was capable of knowing things for sure, that his dad was smarter than your dad. Also cooler than your dad, and capable of beating your dad up. The dad in question was a stock market analyst named Daniel Franco, who worked for Ameriprise Financial at their Minneapolis headquarters. In the mid 1990s, when Jeremy and his (by two years) older brother Jason were growing up, Daniel was regarded as a rising star at Ameriprise. He pulled down a good income, lived in a nice house in the suburbs with his wife and kids, and was generally considered to be in line for a promotion any time now.

But a funny thing happened, and Daniel Franco never got his promotion. He patiently explained at the dinner table that office politics were a cruel and capricious thing, and that he was doing everything he could to fight them and get what he'd rightfully earned. Jeremy nodded along vigorously, and scampered up to his room to crack open a dictionary and look up "capricious". Years later, Jeremy would come to realize that now that he thought about it, his dad's voice was a little slurred when he gave his explanations. He'd always chalked it up to that's just how grownups talk when they're tired.

Daniel's alcoholism grew to the point where he received a demotion and the family had to move to a smaller place in Minneapolis proper. He never lost his job entirely, probably because he had always been friendly and well-liked at the office. And he did eventually clean up, to some extent. But never more than was necessary to coast along. He fixed up his marriage, but only to the extent that his wife Helen decided not to file for divorce. Jeremy never saw any fire in his dad's eyes anymore, none of the excited, boyish glint of ambition and passion that had made him so sure as a kid about how smart and cool his dad was. It seemed like Daniel's only concern in life anymore was to coast idly. To be "good enough".

Jeremy Franco quietly promised that for him, good enough would never be good enough.

One summer, when Jeremy was ten years old, he opened up a lemonade stand with a spiffy sign hand-painted sign that read J. Franco and Associates. His only known associate was the family dog, whose role in the operation was to flop onto the stand lazily. At the end of the summer, Jeremy excitedly showed his earnings to his dad, perhaps in an attempt to reinvigorate Daniel's entrepreneurial drive. No such luck. Daniel managed a weak smile at this and other moneymaking schemes of Jeremy's, but nothing more. Jeremy stopped caring, eventually, and stopped keeping his dad informed about his business dealings.

But it didn't particularly matter anymore. The idea of cheering up his dad became unimportant in the face of the feelings of sheer fun and success that Jeremy was experiencing. When the grand marketplace of high school opened itself up, Jeremy made sure that J. Franco and Associates was open for business. He bought 24-packs of Coke and huge variety packs of potato chips, stuffing them into his locker and hawking them (at cheaper prices than the vending machines!) to anyone who'd listen. He gambled frequently, mostly Texas Hold 'Em. He counted cards, he won more than he lost. He got a hold of a few hacked PSPs and managed to sell them at school, while exaggerating the mysteriousness of their origin. He spent the summer between sophomore and junior year snatching up low-priced items on eBay and immediately re-auctioning them for higher prices. He managed to turn a reasonable profit. He repeated the scheme next summer, while juggling an internship for high school students at Ameriprise.

He thought, as a great many boys of his age have the tendency to think, that he was some kind of mob boss.

A few problems presented themselves on Jeremy's road to becoming Bayview's most successful businessman. To his credit, Jeremy shows quite a potential for business studies, doing extremely well at his AP Microeconomics class (in most other classes, he tends to do the minimum amount of work necessary for an A or B). But the problem is that Jeremy Franco is not a very likable sort of boy. He's loud, he's obnoxious, he likes to brag to people about the success of his moneymaking schemes (as if he were some kind of mob boss). He has a regrettable tendency to say offensive or insensitive things while making jokes, and has a hard time apologizing for them. He's known as a rat and a snitch who can't be trusted with any secret, and who will spill liberally about the misdeeds of others if he thinks doing so has a chance of deflecting wrath or suspicion from himself. He's perhaps not an actively malicious sort, but he has horrible control of his impulses through and through, and is unabashedly self-serving.

The consequence is that people don't so much like Jeremy as put up with him. For the most part, other Bayview kids interact with him by listening to his ramblings and bluntly telling him what they'd like to buy off him. The more sweethearted ones might pretend to laugh at his jokes. The baseball team, on which he plays shortstop, veers between mostly ignoring him and telling him to shut the fuck up. He likes to go to boxing or MMA shows, and enjoys convincing people to come along such that he can talk their heads off about his fight predictions. On the plus side, he's recently managed to convince a small group of naive freshmen that he's cool. He mostly limits himself to joking and bragging with them, though occasionally he tries to rope them into his businesses as subordinates.

As if he were some kind of mob boss.

Advantages: Contrary to appearances, Jeremy is quite smart. He has a keen mind for making plans and schemes, which might lend itself to prolonging his survival. His notoriously self-serving attitude might help him make some ruthless decisions. Thanks to his tenure on the baseball team, he can run short distances quite quickly and knows how to swing things in a way that creates a nice impact.

Disadvantages: Nobody likes Jeremy Franco. There is absolutely no reason to trust him, nor to assume that he's up to anything but some type of dastardly scheme to kill you or steal your weapon. Even those who manage to trust Jeremy will likely have a hard time putting up with his chatter, especially since he's got no soda to sell on the island. Jeremy's potential for alliances is extremely limited.

Designated Number: Male student no. 105

Designated Weapon: Swordstick

Conclusion: Well, this island will make or break B105. Either he'll be able to finally live out his dreams of being someone who matters, and somehow use his grasp of economics to acquire a better weapon, or he'll be dropped like so much garbage by some group of better prepared students. Guess which my money is on. Watching fights does not make one a fighter, B105, and you'll have to be very smart to last any time at all.

'The above biography is as written by Jonny. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Jonny

Kills: None

Killed By: N/A, Escaped

Collected Weapons: Swordstick (Assigned Weapon)

Allies: None

Enemies: None

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:
 * "You need a leader so you can all have that guy speak for you and make the decisions and then nobody gets freaked out! And I think I can be that guy because- hear me out here- you're all on the track team, right, which is awesome, and I'm on the baseball team so that means I can run really fucking fast too. So that makes us all brothers, okay? We're all brothers! Except since I'm on baseball team that also means I can hit things really fucking hard, so that means I'm like a notch above you- though we're still brothers and I'm not looking down on you, not one bit- so I think it's best that leadership role goes to me!"

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Jeremy, in chronological order.

The Past:


 * Elizabeth

V4: Post-Game:
 * The Only Way is Up
 * This Scene Is About A Hat
 * How to Win Friends and Influence People
 * The Beggar King
 * The Gully
 * I Am Jack's Inflamed Sense of Rejection
 * A Slight Change of Plans
 * Larry King Live

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Jeremy Franco. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''


 * Jeremy was the worst of my three v4 characters, which is odd because my two favorite scenes to write in v4 (This Scene is About a Hat and Elizabeth) were Jeremy scenes. I think the problems I have with him in retrospect are twofold. First, there's an issue with voice. Jeremy is an unlikable, long-winded, arrogant shithead, and I feel like I successfully captured that in his thoughts and speech. However, none of that makes him interesting or enjoyable to read. It works to some extent in comedic scenes wherein the gulf between his perceived and actual persuasive abilities is played for laughs, but a lot of the time the reader just has to wait through lots of unnecessary repetition because Jeremy is a guy who unnecessarily repeats himself. It creates verissimilutude, I guess, but little more. Not something I'd want to try again.

The second problem has to do with over-planning. Other than his first thread, every Jeremy thread was carefully planned out beforehand with the other handler or handlers that'd be present. Counter-intuitively, this actually led to him having a weak and disjointed arc: because each scene was planned so thoroughly, he didn't have much flow between the scenes and didn't have nearly as coherent of a story as I would've liked. Sure, he experienced frustrations, broke down, and tried to do a bit of good to make up for it, but those bits don't speak to each other very clearly. Nothing was allowed to organically develop because everything was focused on hitting a particular beat in its own, closed-off scene.

Wish I could've done him better, because there definitely was missed potential. - Jonny
 * I think Jeremy's great. I'm not gonna dispute Jonny's assessment of his relative merits, but there's a lot to like about Jeremy on the whole. The biggest thing, of course, is that he's a character with a lot of hilarious moments who is absolutely not a joke as a person. In fact, Jeremy's got a lot of edge to him. He's a character with some pretty big issues, issues he sometimes hides under wit or his mercantile nature, but that turn up a lot. Jeremy is willing to take advantage of his classmates, to cajole and cheat them if it benefits him, at least at the start. He's funny while doing it, but that's because the readers are looking in on the situation. In this way, he's a lot like one of Jonny's other characters. The key difference is, in the end, Jeremy's not a bad person, just a fairly sleazy and self-interested one. He's got a conscience and mostly does want people to be okay, just it'd be nice if he got to be a little bit more okay.

One of the biggest things about Jeremy that often goes unnoticed is his pregame thread with Liz, which gives a lot of context for his decision to aid her in her escape attempt. It's a great piece of writing, and I think flies under the radar so much only because it came after Liz's death. I do think that it's an example of the planning thing Jonny talks about above to some degree though; it sets up a scene really really nicely, but the scene it sets up was posted before it. The plan was already there, and the whole thing works really brilliantly, but I feel like a lot of handlers didn't bother with the setup because they'd already read the payoff. On the off chance that applies to anyone reading this, I suggest checking the whole story out. It's definitely worth it.

Like so many other rescued kids, I was really glad to see Jeremy survive. That speaks especially well to his writing because, as I've mentioned, he's not exactly as morally upright as most of the other kids who got saved. That's okay, though. Jeremy's a very good character, a great look at being funny without losing track of the character underneath, and all around pretty excellent. He may prioritize scenes over overarching narrative a lot of the time, but my did he get some fine scenes out of that. Wish we'd seen a bit more of him later, but that's true of almost everyone. - MurderWeasel